Prepare for the battering Rahm

Is anyone capable of stopping Emanuel's charge?

Now that the acrimony and hatred of Tuesday's elections are behind us, let's look to the civilized, restrained and genteel politics of Chicago's future.

I'm talking about the Chicago mayoral race.

So civilized, so restrained, so tres genteel.

"Genteel? I have to look that one up," said Gery Chico, the no-nonsense former president of the Chicago Board of Education who is campaigning to replace Mayor Richard Daley. "The only Genteel I know is a guy named Rick from 35th Street. Good guy. Nice family."

Chico knows Chicago politics isn't genteel. It's more like the sound beef ribs make when you pound on them in a meat cooler, if you were so inclined.

And so I asked Chico the question everyone will be asking Wednesday:

Can anyone stop Rahm Emanuel?

Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, has the Daley brothers whispering in his ear and has brilliantly projected a sense of inevitability in the race for mayor. Some think the campaign is already over.

On Tuesday, Chico met me at the Billy Goat Tavern. He wasn't wearing a tie. And in his white shirt, he blended in with all the guys behind the grill.

The native Southwest Sider and graduate of Kelly High School is casting himself as the neighborhood guy standing up to the wealthy outsider.

"When you juxtapose my story against Rahm Emanuel's," Chico said, "you're going to see a guy who worked his way up from the bottom, who was given nothing, who knows these neighborhoods, lives these neighborhoods, born and raised, worked, raised his family here. That's what I'm about."

The longtime insider and former chief of staff to Daley figures his just-another-neighborhood-guy persona dovetails with a perceived Emanuel vulnerability: Rahm's residency.

Emanuel could be vulnerable to a legal challenge of his candidacy, since he just recently moved back to Chicago. But while the legal issues may ultimately be decided by the politics of the Illinois Supreme Court, Chico is already exploiting the political issue.

"We've had police officers and firefighters fired for residency violations that were less obvious than Emanuel's," Chico said. "So when it comes to residency, you tell it to all those firefighters, police officers, city workers, teachers. Go tell them that it's just a minor legal issue."

When Daley announced he wasn't running for re-election after two decades of lordship over the city, there were wriggly bushel baskets full of eager candidates.

Aldermen walked around stiff-legged, their tails in the air like big mean dogs, projecting power. Congressmen reached for the job, too, even the one whose mayoral ambitions were drowned by that blond bikini model.

One by one, they dropped out for reasons of sanity or health or fear of the Rahmfather.

Even Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart bravely ran away, explaining he couldn't simultaneously be a good dad and mayor, to the grief of Southwest Side ward bosses still searching for their anti-Rahm.

And yet others dream childlike dreams, like U.S. Sen. Roland "Tombstone" Burris, who told the Washington Post on Tuesday that he'd like to be mayor too.

"People in Chicago are not that enamored (of Rahm)," Burris told the Post, which actually took him seriously, though nobody does in Illinois.

How big is Tombstone's head, anyway? Remember that Burris ran in the 2002 Illinois gubernatorial primary, played the race card and took African-American votes away from former Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas. Burris helped Rod Blagojevich become governor.

Blagojevich repaid the favor by appointing him to the Senate. So Tombstone is Dead Meat's legacy and nothing more.

But there are a couple of candidates who may have a chance of standing upright against the inexorable power of the Rahmmernaut:

State Sen. James T. Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church, and Chico.

In Chico's view, he's the neighborhood guy and Rahm's the outsider, a characterization Emanuel will no doubt challenge when he's good and ready.

"Rahm expects nothing less than a tough contest against well-qualified candidates," said spokesman Ben LaBolt. "But he doesn't spend his days worrying about who's in or who's out of the race."

Emanuel is no fool. He's got political support and he'll have millions to spend on TV spots. Some of that cash will come from the Hollywood connection of his agent brother. Another belief is that Obama will shake the federal money tree over Chicago if Emanuel is elected mayor. Rahm also has had favorable news coverage that all but glosses over his weaknesses.

All of it helps Rahm project that inevitable sense about his candidacy.

But Sen. Meeks doesn't see it that way.

"The perception is not based on reality," Meeks said. "It's not based on neighborhoods, or a groundswell from communities. It's based solely on media perception, on hype. It appears as if there's a newspaper that insists on making Rahm the frontrunner."

Not this newspaper, I said.

"No," Meeks said. "I meant the other one."

On Wednesday, the dust of the midterm elections will begin to settle. The blood-curdling screams from those negative TV ads will echo faintly across the prairie.